The White Crane style does not include a wide variety of kicks. Similar to a lot of Nanfang (Southern) Kung Fu's most of the leg techniques focus on footwork in order to open up the hands for bridging. I'll touch more on that later. Note that many of these kicks were never given formal names as they were taught by Zhu Sifu. These kicks were also often done with corresponding arm movements, ostensibly to distract from or "hide" the kicks, but also at close-range, they can be used as grabbing techniques for a throw or sweep.
- Leg kick: This is done with either leg, although the rear leg has the best leverage. It's executed like a roundhouse kick, striking with the top of the foot (ideally at the top of the ankle when the foot is extended straight out) at the calf, knees, thighs, or inner thigh.
- Roundhouse Kick: This is similar to a karate or Tae Kwon Do round-house kick. High kicks were done as part of forms and practice, but for our applications, they'd usually be targeting the abdomen and groin.
- Spin Kick: Another kick done as a balance drill. The rear leg pulls up as the body turns away from your opponent, and then extends up to hit the head with the heel.
- Reverse Roundhouse: The kicking leg is brought up and chambered at the knee, with the hips slightly turned away from the kicking leg. Simultaneously as the kick is extended, the kicks turn in the direction of the kicking leg. The target can be the groin, head, or knees. The striking surface is the top of the foot. For a knee kick, this striking surface is actually the edge of the foot, which is then followed by a stomp to collapse the opponent's leg to the ground.
- Crescent Kick: Both inside and outside crescent kicks (similar to karate or TKD). The hand or forearm is usually extended so that the kick slaps against it. This is done only for training purposes, in order to condition the hands, train for balance, and to build leg flexibility. In fighting application, most of these kicks would be low.
- Spinning Flying Roundhouse Kick: This is a rather impractical kick and mostly used for agility, strength, and balance training. I believe this is called tornado kick in TKD. The kick initiates by taking a step forward with the rear leg, which will end up as the kicking leg. As your agility increase this can be a sweep or a roundhouse kick. As you continue forward, turn your shoulders and head around to quickly "spot" your opponent, while simultaneously bringing your other leg (the leg that was originally forward) straight up by the knee. As you continue to rotate in air, turn your hips and perform a roundhouse kick with your kick leg. If you are just starting and are lacking in lift or flexibility, it can be done as a crescent kick instead. The higher you bring this knee, the higher you will jump and the higher your kick will be. You should prefer to get distance rather than height with this jump. Ideally you should be able to hit a focus pad at about head-level at about 20 feet away from your initial standing position.
- Stomp kick: The kicking leg comes straight forward, with the foot turned outwards in order to expose the heel. Targets are the leg, hip-flexors, or the abdomen.
- Snapping Kick: This was taught as similar to a Tan-Tui kick from the Long Fist style. The kicking leg comes almost straight up from the ground, strikes the target (usually groin, or thigh) and quickly pulls back to a chambered position with the knees bent. The idea behind this kick is to imagine your leg as a bow string, with the snapping out and back similar to the "twang" (or "tan") vibration if you snapped a bow string back. In the old days of China (before mechanization) cotton was separated by hand using a bow-like tool with a tightly pulled wiring string. The string was pulled and snapped on the cotton (thereby separating it) by banging on it with a small hammer, thus making a "tan-tan-tan" sound. This was the inspiration for the naming of this technique.
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